Food sometimes acts as another character in movies. Well-known directors use it to tell stories, under the pretext of the conversations that take place around a table or the symbolism associated with certain foods. But there are times when gastronomy becomes the protagonist of the big screen, as happens in the series Nada that premieres today on platforms or in Juliette Binoche’s latest film La passion de Dodin Bouffant (A slow fire). Lights, camera and… let’s eat!
The San Sebastián film festival closed its 71st edition just two weeks ago and left a list of films not to be missed, also in the culinary field. Because in a city like San Sebastián, which is associated with cinema and gastronomy equally, an event in which both arts share the spotlight could not be missing. And those responsible for the festival and the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) did not hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity and create Culinary Zinema, which this year celebrated its 13th edition.
Culinary Zinema, the world’s only gastronomic section at a Class A Film Festival, opened with the world debut of the Argentine miniseries Nada, from directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat. The series premieres today on Disney and is a fiction of five chapters (about 30 minutes each) that tells the story of Manuel (Luis Brandonoi), a sophisticated and inflexible food critic who has lived for decades with a woman who solves everything for him. , a kind of personal assistant, housekeeper and cook.
When she dies he realizes that he doesn’t know how to do anything at all. Cornered by the lack of resources, he must replace that figure with an inexperienced young woman with whom he will experience unusual, intense, contradictory and tender situations that will capitalize on learning for both of them. Nada also features a special appearance by actor Robert De Niro, who plays a New York man with whom the protagonist shares meals, readings and walks through Buenos Aires. A friendly comedy that reviews the figure of the critic while exposing the cultural and generational clash that occurs in our societies.
Although San Sebastián left other novelties in the gastronomic field that deserve mention, and among them the two documentaries that have participated this year in Culinary Zinema stand out: Pachacútec – La Escuela Improbable, by director Mariano Carranza; and She Chef, by Melanie Liebheit and Gereon Wtzel.
The first is a project produced in collaboration with chef Gastón Acurio and tells the emotional story of three Peruvian chefs for whom a cooking school in a disadvantaged neighborhood on the outskirts of Lima paved the way for them to succeed in their profession. “It was an oasis in the middle of the desert, literally and metaphorically,” said Jhosmery Cáceres, protagonist of one of those stories. Through them we know the power of cooking as a social weapon and the importance of young people with fewer resources who feel lost having reference figures that encourage them to find their way is highlighted.
Liebheit and Wetzel returned to the festival with a slow-cooked project after having participated in 2011 with their documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress. Two years to convince Agnes Karrasch to be filmed and two more to follow the day-to-day life of this young chef during her time as a stagier at the Barcelona restaurant Enjoy (which allows you to experience from the inside the pandemic closure of a haute cuisine establishment), the Vendôme restaurant in Germany and Koks, in the Faroe Islands.
She Chef portrays the absence of women in the kitchens of large restaurants and their difficulties in progressing in an environment of almost entirely male figures. But beyond that critical look, the documentary exposes something much simpler: the uncertainty and provisionality of a life in constant movement.
The story of a girl who leaves Beijing, her job and her boyfriend to set up a rural house in her hometown, where she cooks for her guests and learns their stories, is collected by Xiao Haiping in Nan fang nan fang (Back to the South). But if there was a film that swept the screen during her time at Zinemaldia and stood out for its sincere and natural portrayal of everyday cooking, it was La passion de Dodin Bouffant (A slow fire).
After winning the best director award at Cannes, French-Vietnamese Tran Anh Hung won the Best Culinary Zinema Film award for the film starring Juliette Binoche. “Every director considers showing an artistic discipline throughout his life: I decided to portray culinary art,” explained the filmmaker in conversation with Comer La Vanguardia. “In the place where I grew up everything was very ugly, the only beauty I saw was in the dishes my mother cooked.”
That beauty and that passion for cooking is what he has tried to convey in the film set in the 19th century that will represent France at the Oscars and that shows a love story but above all of admiration between a cook and a gourmet from the era (played by Benoît Magimel). A work in which feelings are expressed through dishes more than words and where chef Pierre Gagnaire, who advised the gastronomic part of the film, plays a small role.
One of the great attractions of this section of the festival and why it has become one of the audience’s favorites is the possibility of going beyond the screen and entering the narrative universe of the film through its cuisine. Each screening featured a themed dinner that guest chefs or the protagonists themselves prepared at the BCC facilities with the help of the center’s students in the living room and kitchen. “For us it is a great opportunity to learn and live an experience that is, without a doubt, sensational,” explains Santiago, a fourth-grade student. And those succulent premieres from the San Sebastián festival are arriving (or will soon arrive) in our homes.
